Google stole my friend's birthday | Hacker News Reader

Google stole my friend's birthday

3 pointsraphar5 comments

My poor friend (and also several million people) was born on a 29th of february. Off course she is tired of listening jokes about her birthday every 4 years, and that's not the story.

The story (or BUG REPORT) is about Google Calendar:

I added her birthday on Google Calendar, and I had to do it on 29th February 2012, all right. The problem is that when I went to 2013 calendar, the birthday wasn't there. It appeared once again (predictably) on 2016.

Here's my complain: If I can make an event on 29th that repeats dayly, weekly or monthly without problems, why on earth it doesn't work yearly?!?!?!? The thing get worse if you repeat the event yearly a fixed number of times. If you say that you want it 4 times, the event on 29th lasts 16 years, if you do it on 1st march, it lasts 4....

So, come on Google, you can't fail me on this easy one, at least give me a warning before eating her birthday!!!

UPDATE: The calendar also fail to render a series of monthly events if you happen to add the first on the 31st. It's their dialog that says "repeats every one month" and fails.

This is not a bug. It's common sense. You can't make an event on the 29th of February repeat yearly because the 29th of February doesn't repeat yearly. This isn't Google's fault. Set the event for the day you actually celebrate her birthday. That will repeat yearly. Problem solved.

I think that since February 29th is an exception in our calendar it should ask if this event should repeat every 4 years (real 29th) or repeat every year (fallback to 28th or March 1st). I think it's common sense that setting an event to "yearly" even though that date doesn't exist every year should still happen every year.

Edit : Anyone know how it handles an event created monthly on the 31st of each month?

I understand your point of view. But she, and also millions of people, are no software guys. They don't get it. Also my complain is about the dialog where you add the event. As I said, If I choose to repeat weekly the calendar has no problem to generate an event every 7 days, but with years it clearly fails.

So let's say that Google decided to repeat the event every 365 days, using the analog of a perfect 7-day week as you did above. That means that every 4 years, Google's "birthday" is going to fall one day further behind your friend's actual birthday, which is clearly incorrect. I think the correct answer, as was stated above, is to simply ask someone whether they want this to repeat annually on Feb. 28 excepting leap years OR if they can accept the 4-year cycle.

I searched google for anagram the other day and it asked if I meant "nag a ram". Clearly Google is capable of and, I agree, should, handle scheduling leap year birthdays.

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